How well that works one has to look to the contrasting fates of Japan and the USA . Japan’s aid diplomacy has few positive vresults -”buying friendship” has always had that danger. As for the USA, well, the biggest difference is that its commercial power has always had the shadow of military might backing it- what couldn’t be enticed by greed could always be scared off by guns and the like. To Americans, anyone who represents a threat to hegemony is a rival or enemy, hence the sinister overtones. To onlookers, American unease or the broader unease of the West reflects an ironic awareness of how western hegemony has looked to the rest of the world.

“See my freshly published Policy Brief at peterson institute on this:”

Yes.

“According to the reports, no CEOs were physically harmed in Singapore…”

What reports, what CEOs? Perhaps a very small CEO was harmed a little bit?

Your other remark:

“By the way, does it occur to you even a little bit that screaming “murder” and comparing Chinese to a mafia is a bit over the top? No sympathy here anyway: the fittest will adjust.”

Hey, I am not screaming, and certainly not screaming murder. Agreeing with someone who believes (plausibly, because that is the local law) that the ultimate shareholder (the PRC) of SOEs has the death penalty in its repertoire, even for relatively mild cases of corruption, is hardly over the top. A propos the mafia: the comparison was with the fictitional mafia (you know, the godfather stuff etc), because that is the one that people know. I have no idea whether there is one in reality and what it does. And the fictitional mafia has a similar repertoire.

“Rien – what is your take on Temasek?”

You ‘re expecting too much.. I guess Mr Goodyear should never have accepted this job, but that is another issue.

Temasek is much more than just an investment corporation. It is a conglomerate with a distinctive role in the “Singaporean model” . In order to manage it, you have to subscribe to the type of developmentalism that informs Singapore’s leadership, because it is basically only a tool. But it is separate from regular government (difficult to raid in populist fashion).

If you think you are going to run Templeton or, for that matter GE, when Spore hires you for Temasek, you are wrong. But I find it hard to believe that an experienced mining CEO would neglect his politics. So maybe there is something going on in Singapore that makes it hard to do business as usual and hard to do something else. And something that was not there five, six months ago. As I said, interesting

By the way, does it occur to you even a little bit that screaming “murder” and comparing Chinese to a mafia is a bit over the top? No sympathy here anyway: the fittest will adjust.